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Saturday, 30 August 2014

Stagecoach Boothferry Estate Services Changes

From Monday 1st September, Stagecoach in Hull are making some changes to their West Hull services 1 and 2 which operate between the City Centre and the Boothferry Estate; the 1 via Walker Street and Hessle Road and the 2 via Anlaby Road and Anlaby Park Road.One of the main change affects early morning services, as part of Stagecoach's city wide Workers+ initative, with the first four weekday journeys on service 1 from Boothferry Estate (0510, 0540, 0610 and 0640) now operating as service 1K. They will follow the existing route to the city centre, serve Hull Truck Theatre instead of the Interchange and then operate via Prospect Street, George Street, Cleveland Street, Stoneferry Road, West Carr Lane, Stockholm Road and Thomas Clarkson Way to Kingswood Retail Park, providing access to the industrial areas around Stoneferry and Sutton Fields. I suspect Kingswood Retail Park is just a convienent terminus point, and possibly the start of the next journey for the bus and driver. Also as part of Workers+ certain weekday early morning services on route 2 will, upon arrival at Hull Interchange, continue as a service 30 via Stoneferry to Bransholme. This includes new departures at 0455 and 0525 (first departure previously 0555). Overall these Workers+ changes do provide easier access to key employment areas and hopefully will be a success - though I'm not aware of any return services from Sutton Fields later in the day, unless passengers walk to Holwell Road and catch service 30?A more minor early morning change sees the weekday 'at least every 10 minute' frequency start from the Boothferry Estate on service 1 start at 0700 rather than 0715. On Saturdays there is a new 0600 service 1 from Hull Interchange, returning as a new 0625 service 2 from Boothferry Estate, half an hour earlier than the present first service,Stagecoach are also reducing the number of services using the city centre loop inbound. Apart from the 1K and those journeys on service 2 continuing as a service 30, all services will use the city centre loop inbound until 1400 daily after which they will operate directly to the Interchange via Ferensway. Currently only services between 1500 and 1800 Monday to Saturday omit the inbound city centre loop, which provides easy access to Princes Quay and the Old Town. I am therefore slightly surprised that evening services will not serve the inbound city centre loop.The early evening service is being reduced from every 20 minutes to half hourly Monday to Saturday, affecting departures from Hull Interchange on service 1 between 1800 and 2100, and on service 2 between 1810 and 2050, plus associated return services from the Boothferry Estate.Finally the N2 service number seems to have been withdrawn, with the Saturday nightbus between Hull and Hessle using service number 2 instead; the last departures each way at 0125 from Hessle and 0200 from Hull have been withdrawn, leaving just the 0000 and 0100 from Hull and 0025 from Hessle.